


Choice and Consequence

by AngelQueen



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Ahsoka is So Done, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Force Ghosts, Gen, Has Since Been Jossed But Hey, Has since been jossed, Headcanon, Just Roll With It, Mixed With Drabbles, This came from tumblr, bullet point fic, sort of character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 08:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8156362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelQueen/pseuds/AngelQueen
Summary: On Malachor, Ahsoka makes a choice.Or, My Headcanon as to what happened to Ahsoka after her fight with Darth Vader on Malachor.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to write this headcanon ever since I first saw _Twilight of the Apprentice_ , but could never quite find the right words. Until now. It suddenly started flowing out of me so fast, my fingers could barely keep up.
> 
> It's rough, but it's probably the closest I'll come to writing actual fic for this.
> 
> Original post located [here](http://angelqueen04.tumblr.com/post/151040469843/headcanon-ahsoka-tano-after-the-battle-on).

 

  * Badly injured in the destruction of the Sith Temple, Ahsoka hides out in the bowels of the ruins, trying to heal herself. The problem: her Force healing skills are lousy. Anakin was never much good at it, and due to the war, Ahsoka never had a chance to take the supplementary classes that most Padawans take to help round out their education.
  * The pretty convoree that swoops down into the catacombs turns out to be a manifestation of the Daughter, who has resided within Ahsoka since the Mortis clusterfuck (not to be confused with the Rako Hardeen clusterfuck, but you get the idea). She can’t heal Ahsoka since she’s actually a part of her and thus is limited by that form, but she can help guide her on another path, though she can offer no guarantees that it will work. Basically, she offers to help Ahsoka attempt to become a Force ghost.
  * Ahsoka’s first thoughts are about how this might allow her to be of more help to the Rebellion, but while she’s resting, her thoughts turn back to Vader. It hadn’t been because she had heard Anakin’s voice, mingled with the helmet’s vocal modulator, which stopped her from following Ezra and Kanan to their ship. There had been something more, something that had tugged ever so faintly at the old bond she had once shared with her old master. Basically, Ahsoka had looked into the dark, black abyss that was Darth Vader and saw the dying, flickering flame that was Anakin Skywalker. Whatever he had done, something of the good man she had known was still there. That’s why she had declared, almost before the thought was fully formed in her mind, that she would not leave him. She was speaking to that little flicker, and for a moment, he seemed to hear her.
  * So Ahsoka’s thoughts turn from helping the Rebellion to helping Anakin, and it that one thought that remains in her mind as her body slowly fails her… and then fades to nothing.
  * For the next several years, Ahsoka becomes Vader’s friendly Force ghost/companion. She talks to him, argues with him, uses the Force to throw things at his helmet when he’s being particularly dick-ish, and so on. Vader tries to ignore her as much as possible at first, but as pointed out, Ahsoka isn’t having that shit. So they start talking. There is much arguing – Ahsoka says that Palpatine is a lying sack o’ bantha dung whom they should have let the Zillo Beast eat all those years ago, Vader says that they were right to not let the Zillo Beast eat him (though he doesn’t say that if the Zillo Beast were still alive, he might consider letting it eat Palpatine – wouldn’t be right to show division in the ranks, even if Ahsoka is kind of dead and can’t tell anyone about it). Ahsoka says that Tarkin is an unmitigated, arrogant prick, Vader says… okay, he’ll concede on that one.
  * Ahsoka doesn’t go everywhere with Vader, though. When he goes to Coruscant to visit the Emperor, she makes herself scarce. She doesn’t think Palpatine could do anything to her in this form, but she’s not taking the chance. So when she’s not harassing Vader and trying to talk to Anakin, she explores what else she can do in this form. She visits her friends, sees Ezra and Kanan and frets over them a bit, and checks in on Rex. She talks to him, but he never responds, though sometimes, when he’s in that place between sleep and consciousness, she thinks he might hear her just for a second.
  * Fast forward to the theft of the Death Star plans and the capture of Princess Leia. Now, Ahsoka is familiar with the princess, having met/seen her when she used to work with Bail, and thus is rather fond of her. So when Leia is captured, cuffed, and brought before Vader, how do you think she didn’t end up getting Force choked? Because Ahsoka is there, giving Vader her best glare and ready to punch him in the helmet (she’s done it on occasion and whether he admits it or not, it fucking _hurts_ ). So instead, Vader confines himself to being condescending and shaking his finger at her and declaring her a traitor ~~(and wondering why he suddenly feels like a parent scolding his child for being out too late with the wrong crowd)~~.
  * The destruction of Alderaan causes such a backlash in the Force that it knocks Ahsoka senseless and out of the physical plane for weeks. The waves of terror, despair, anguish, and wanton, evil destruction are the very antithesis of all that she’s believed in and lived and breathed, and if she’d still been alive, she’s pretty sure it would have killed her.
  * When she finally makes it back, she finds a whole new world – Obi-Wan is a Force ghost and still manages to look like hell, Vader is throwing fits like she’s never seen before (and she’s seen some doozeys). The good news? The Death Star’s been destroyed. Well, aside from the fact that close to a million more people died in said destruction.
  * This is how Ahsoka learns about Luke Skywalker:



 

“Did you know?” Vader growls the moment she appears. There is so much anger, so much hatred permeating the room that Ahsoka would have choked on it if she still required oxygen to breathe. As it is, it still fucking _stings_.

“Know what?” she asks him, leaning back against the wall.

“ _Do not play games with me!_ ” he roars, and everything in his meditation pod shakes to life and flies in random directions. The cold, crushing fury pushes on her even harder, and it’s all Ahsoka can do to appear unaffected. She’s learned when not to show fear or vulnerability. “ _Did. You. Know_?”

She sighs and crosses her arms. “It would help if you could be more specific. I’ve been out of it  –“

She never finishes the sentence. The Force coalesces around her and if she still had a physical body, her throat would now be nothing rubble. The pressure builds around her, and Ahsoka can see his eyes glowing like two hot suns behind the lenses of his mask.

“Did you help them hide my son from me?” he snarls at her, leaping out of his seat and stalking forward. He points at her. “Did you aid Obi-Wan in hiding him away from me, his own father? Did you steal my child like a thief in the night? Did you rip him from _her_ womb before she was even dead? _Did you, Ahsoka_?”

 

  * Needless to say, Ahsoka gives Obi-Wan and Yoda both a piece of her mind the next time she sees them. Then, when she learns of their plans for Luke – namely, that he be trained to defeat and kill Vader without even being told who is really behind the mask – well, the ensuing storm that cropped up on Dagobah lasted for a good two weeks. It’s a miracle Yoda’s hut wasn’t completely flooded.



 

“This is what the Jedi are reduced to?” Ahsoka demands. “Teaching a boy to fight and then setting him loose to kill his own father?”

“His father, Vader is not,” Yoda maintains. “No more, Skywalker is. Only Vader.”

“It’s the only way, Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan says. He is calm, but Ahsoka can see the sorrow, can feel just how broken her grandmaster has become. “The boy is our only hope to restore the Republic.”

Anakin may have been the one who was dismembered, but Obi-Wan did not come away from their battle unscathed. Ahsoka stares at this old man and can barely recognize the man who helped to train her, who fought beside her.

“So the Republic is to be re-founded on the sin of patricide,” she says. She gives them a hard stare. “Have the Jedi learned nothing? Evil committed in the name of good is still evil, and it taints all that it touches!” Surely they have not forgotten? The Republic that they are so attached to (she cannot help but snort inwardly) sought to preserve itself on the backs of slaves made especially to fight and die, and the result was that so much blood bathed the galaxy that the people willingly embraced a Sith Lord’s dream of an empire in order to escape it.

“He will learn the truth,” she tells them. “If you go through with this, if you have him do as you wish, he will discover the truth someday, and it will cast an even deeper shadow on everything you seek to accomplish.”

She leans forward. “You will lose him as surely as you lost Anakin. If you direct him to murder his father, you will lose him.”

 

  * She might as well as try to negotiate with an old battle droid, for all that they listen to her. Ahsoka does not approach Luke. So far as she can see, Vader is the only living being who can consciously hear her. And even if Luke could hear and see her, why would he believe the words of a stranger?
  * Bespin… is a clusterfuck all around. Vader freezes Leia’s boyfriend in carbonite and hands him off to that sleemo Boba Fett, cuts off his son’s hand, confronts the boy with the truth, and ends up with nothing to show for it. Ahsoka, who had tried so hard to get him to stop, had _screamed_ at him, in the end says nothing more and merely sits with him after the boy and his friends escape the Empire’s clutches.
  * After Bespin, Vader starts talking to Palpatine a lot. Or Palpatine talks to him. Whatever. Ahsoka never sticks around for that, and instead takes to wandering. She does not speak to Obi-Wan and Yoda, does not approach them. They do not reach for her either, and she imagines that they know where she spends the majority of her time now. It’s around this time that she finds herself wandering into the company of Luke.
  * She watches the boy, sees the leadership, the skill… the buried sorrow. She sees Anakin as he once was. She sees the kindness, the cheer, the optimism, the faith. She sees Padmé. The best of two most wonderful people that she ever knew all coalesced into one young man. She wishes she could speak to him, to tell him that all that isn’t lost. She wants him to know of who his parents really were.
  * Master Yoda’s death does not cast a shockwave through the Force, but rather a sad, tepid ripple. Ahsoka feels it nonetheless and actually approaches Dagobah. She listens in silence as Luke confronts Obi-Wan about the truth. “There _is_ still good in him,” he says, and Ahsoka freezes, stares at him. The words, though just spoken, seem like an echo of someone else’s words, though whose she could not guess.
  * When Luke departs, Ahsoka lingers, watching Obi-Wan. “Twins,” she whispers. Twins. Leia. A girl who had all the diplomatic training and love that Bail and Breha Organa could give her, a monument to her mother’s legacy, but who had no problem picking up a weapon and fighting when the situation called for it. Leia. The best of all her parents.



 

“He wants to believe that love can save him,” Obi-Wan says, his voice cutting into the sounds of the swamps local fauna. “He wants so desperately to believe that love can reach him in all that darkness.”

Ahsoka stares at him. It’s the first time she has heard Obi-Wan acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is still something of Anakin left beneath that black armor.

“Why can’t you believe?” she asks. Why cannot Obi-Wan Kenobi, who once believed in Anakin Skywalker above all others, have faith now?

He turns to her and, again, Ahsoka is struck by the grief and heartache that have bent him to breaking. “Because he loved Padmé Amidala more than any other being in the universe, Ahsoka,” he whispers, his eyes dry but full of pain. The tears have long been shed, and he has no more to give, it seems. “And he destroyed her without even hesitating.” His shoulders slumped. “He kills those he loves.”

The look he gives her is a knowing one before he turns away. Ahsoka comprehends his assumption, but she has not the words to correct him.

 

  * It doesn’t take long for Ahsoka to guess what Luke has in mind after they reach Endor. She stays close to him, tries to ignore the darkness hovering in the sky that has nothing to do with the enormous space station being constructed there. She watches the team befriend the indigenous Ewoks, keeps a close eye on Rex, who has made it this far and is as determined as ever to see the Empire fall, for justice to be done for his brothers, fallen and survivor alike. “Look after the princess,” she whispers to him just as she drifts off to see the son and daughter of Anakin speak for what might be the last time.
  * She listens to Luke plead with his father, even makes a point of appearing next to him, nodding her support. “Search your feelings,” the young man urges. “Let go of your hate!” Oh, she can feel how he longs to, can sense Anakin deep within, wanting so much to reach out to the son he has only just found. But he doesn’t, too mired in darkness and wallowing in guilt. “It is too late for me.”
  * When Luke is transported to the space station, Ahsoka refuses to hesitate in following. She has avoided Palpatine for years, fearful of what he might be able to do to her in this state, and there are limits to what she can do in the mortal plane. Still, if this young man can find the courage to stand up to the monster that has caused so much pain and misery, then so too can she. She will not let him face that beast alone, will not let Anakin face him alone anymore.
  * The ensuing battle is a persistent buzz in the back of her mind, one Ahsoka does her best not to focus on. There is nothing she can do for them, not for Rex, Leia, and the others on the surface, not for Hera, who pilots the _Ghost_ through the torrent of Imperial ships alongside dozens of allies, not for Ezra and Zeb, who fire the weapons with uncanny accuracy. She must focus on the here and now, where the souls of men are being fought over.
  * Luke fights well, with much more control than he did at Cloud City. He defends himself well, but limits his aggression. “I will not fight you, Father,” he says softly, his gaze determined. “You couldn’t bring yourself to kill me before, and I don’t believe you’ll destroy me now,” he declares moments later, his faith unwavering. When Vader throws his lightsaber and the walkway crashes down, she at last breaks her silence. “ARE YOU INSANE? ANAKIN!” He ignores her, striding down to the lower levels with his lightsaber ignited. She follows, ignoring the cackling bastard behind her.
  * When Luke’s patience and control snaps and he lashes out, Ahsoka continues to shout at both of them. Stop, stop, they must stop! This is not the way! This is wrong! But they still ignore her, and there is nothing handy for her to throw at them.
  * Turns out, she doesn’t need to throw things at Luke’s head. He calms down on his own (though, granted, not without cutting off one of his father’s hands – jeez, Skyguy, you just can’t keep ‘em, can you?). When he throws his weapon away and renounces the wrinkly bastard, declaring himself a Jedi, the Force _hums_ its delight –



 

– Until Palpatine unleashes Force lightning on him, that is. Then the Force cries out, screaming nearly as loud as it did when the Jedi were cut down so long ago. Ahsoka screams too, and pushes at Vader’s shoulders as he slowly moves to stand next to Palpatine. “Stop this, stop this,” she shouts. “He’s your son!” Her cries are loud (she doesn’t know how Palpatine doesn’t hear her), but Luke’s are even more so.

“Father, _please_!” he howls, writhing on the ground beneath the waves of electricity. “Help me, please!”

It’s those words that make something in him go still, as though he recalls them from somewhere else. Ahsoka has no time to analyze the matter. She has to stop this. She will not let Luke die. No more are going to die, and if it destroys her to stop this, so be it oh Force let it be –

Just a microsecond before she leaps… _Anakin moves_. He grabs Palpatine, raising him high and ignoring the old man’s shrieks of pain as his own power twists out of control and consumes him and the man carrying him. His screams echo down the ventilator shaft, silenced only by the subsequent explosion.

Ahsoka’s knees, though transparent, still hit the deck hard. Her chest hurts, her eyes hurt, everything is so bright, what’s happening, how –

 _Ahsoka_ …

It’s the faintest whisper in her mind, but she hears it nonetheless. She looks up, sees Luke holding him close. His helmeted head leans against his son’s shoulder, but she knows he’s looking in her direction.

“Anakin,” she breathes.

 

  * She tries not to listen to the conversation that occurs in the hangar. Let it be a private one between father and son. Still, when she feels Anakin’s presence fade into the Force, Ahsoka can barely contain a sob. He had not acknowledged her again, but she reminds herself that this isn’t important. What matters is that he died Anakin Skywalker, a man free to love those he wished for perhaps the first time in his life. He died a good man.
  * She whispers to Luke that he must go, dry his tears and leave this place. Let not Anakin’s sacrifice be in vain. Thankfully, he does just that. He pulls his father onto the last shuttle, leaving the body to lie on the deck while he runs for the cockpit. Ahsoka does not follow, instead sitting on a nearby bench and staring at the body of the man who had been master, teacher, brother, friend, enemy. When his physical body fades, she cannot help but hope… perhaps he has found the path that she took. But she does not feel his presence in the Force. She is alone.
  * When they land, she watches Luke construct a pyre. When he struggles to lift the empty armor up, she reaches out, nudging, adding her strength to his own. As the armor burns, Ahsoka stands beside him in silence, watching.



 

“Who are you?”

The question makes Ahsoka startle and she turns. Luke is still gazing at the flames, but she can feel his attention shifting in her direction. There is no hostility in his words, merely a tired curiosity.

“Ahsoka,” she answers softly, hardly daring to believe that someone besides Anakin and the dead is speaking to her. “My name is Ahsoka Tano. I… was your father’s apprentice, at one time.”

When he turns to her, she offers him a hesitant smile. He glances back at the pyre, and then winces, asking, “Did he…?”

She understands, and then shakes her head. “It was my choice. I knew he was still there, could feel him. He needed someone to believe in him, someone… to hold onto him… until you could come to save him.”

Luke shakes his head. “He saved me,” he murmurs.

Ahsoka chuckles. “You saved each other, then,” she says. “And I cannot thank you enough for doing it. He died free at last. The shackles came off. All of them.”

 

  * They only talk for a short time before Ahsoka urges him to seek out the living. His many friends and comrades are waiting for him, as is his sister. She promises to come and speak more of Anakin later. As the celebrations break out throughout the Ewoks’ villages, Ahsoka walks lightly among the crowds. She sees Hera, and Ezra, and Zeb, and Kanan, all clinging together, laughing. When Hera pulls Kanan down into a furious kiss, Zeb roars with laughter while Ezra grins. When a particularly bright and intricate set of fireworks go off, they are soon joined by Sabine, who looks very pleased with herself. She next finds Rex. He’s been injured, but she can sense that he’ll survive, and it doesn’t stop him from taking a long swig from one of the Ewoks’ gourds. Ahsoka doesn’t even want to hazard a guess as to what’s in it.
  * Later on into the night, she hears Luke whisper her name, asking her to come. Curious, she responds… and finds herself standing on a remote balcony. Luke stands there, leaning against a large tree trunk, but he is not alone. Obi-Wan stands there, bright against the night. Yoda is there, sitting lightly on the railing and looking so much younger than she had ever seen him look.



 

Then she sees him. Then she sees _Anakin_ , whole and healthy and _happy_. Ahsoka can’t hold back the gasp that passes through her lips.

His eyes meet her, and he smiles, hesitant and suddenly unsure. “Hey, Snips,” he says uncertainly.

She hasn’t heard that nickname in _decades_ , and while it once irritated her, it’s now the most beautiful name among the stars.

Tears fill her eyes and one hand comes up to cover her trembling lips. She doesn’t know who reaches for the other first, but suddenly she is in her friend’s arms, clinging to him tightly. She cries into his chest, weeps for the first time in so long, and she can feel his own tears dripping onto her lekku, but she doesn’t care. All that matters is that he’s here. Anakin is _here_.

Slowly, she turns her head, still refusing to let go of him, and her gaze lands on Obi-Wan. He watches them with a faint, wistful smile, and suddenly all that lies between them – all the hurtful words, the anger, the conflict – falls away. He is her friend too, her family. She reaches out with a single hand in his direction. Surprise flickers across his features, but he slowly takes her hand in his own, squeezing it affectionately.

Ahsoka snorts. This won’t do at all. She gives him one good yank, which is all that’s needed. Suddenly, they’re all together in a tangle of limbs and laughter, and for the first time in so long, Ahsoka Tano knows peace.

This is how it should be, how it always should have been. The three of them. Together.


End file.
